The common belief that “50 percent of all marriages end in divorce” has been disproven as recent studies show that the divorce rate is much lower, especially among religious couples. Tim B. Heaton and Kristen L. Goodman, of BYU’s Family and Demographic Research Institute, found that “non-temple marriages are about five times more likely to end in divorce than temple marriages,” and “about 5.4 percent of LDS males who married in the temple were later divorced. By comparison, some 32.7 percent of non-temple LDS marriages ended in divorce for women.”In 2000, it was reported that only 6 percent of LDS temple marriages end in divorce, according to Mormon Newsroom.“I think the temple has a huge effect on how we view marriage,” Amanda Archinuk, a student visiting from Arizona said. “Because the temple is so sacred, we view marriage as sacred, so we work harder to keep our marriages intact.”Heaton and Goodman found divorce is most common among couples who claim no religion. “Some 39 percent of the men and 45 percent of the women in this group have experienced at least one divorce,” Heaton and Goodman reported in their 1984 study, “About 14 percent of the Latter-day Saint men and 19 percent of the women have experienced divorce.”They concluded that those who attend church frequently are less likely to get divorced. The divorce rate was 47 percent in 1984, according to the U.S. census. It is assumed that the high divorce rate came as a result of the passing of no-fault divorce laws during the 1970s.Shaunti Feldhahn, author of the book “The Good News About Marriage: Debunking Discouraging Myths about Marriage and Divorce,” conducted an eight-year study proving that the divorce rate is significantly lower than 50 percent.Feldhahn told CBN news, “First-time marriages: probably 20 to 25 percent have ended in divorce on average… That’s still too high, but it’s a whole lot better than what people think it is,” Feldhahn continued to say, “‘The Good News About Marriage’… reveals the divorce rate among those active in their church is 27 to 50 percent lower than among non-churchgoers.”“People don’t see marriage problems as some sort of stigma anymore,” Bill Chausee of Child and Family Services of New Hampshire said in an interview with Fox news. “They’re really interested in learning how to stay married; a lot of them are realizing they need more skill.”Marriage counseling programs have become more popular in the last 10 years, partly due to the Bush Administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative, according to Fox news. The initiative made marriage counseling more accessible to the public.“In the past 30 years, we’ve had more divorce than any culture has ever had,” Glenn Stanton, a family policy expert with the conservative ministry Focus on the Family said in an interview with Fox new.“A lot of young adults now are coming out of the family upheaval of the ‘70s, and they are cohabiting out of fear. They don’t want to mess up the nice clean carpet of marriage—they saw their parents do that,” said Stanton.Feldhahn confirmed by saying, ‘The studies show that if they (a couple) stay married for five years, that almost 80 percent of those will be happy five years later.”
Writer: Emily Halls ~ Multimedia Journalist
